Pierson Falls to Haldane in Class C Regional Final

The Pierson boys basketball team fell one victory short of matching last season’s New York State Final Four appearance, after losing, 57-53, to Haldane in the Class C Regional Final at Eastport-South Manor High School on Friday evening.

The loss brings a close to the season for the Whalers, who had a solid campaign in their own right, finishing with a 13-9 record and the Suffolk County Class C Championship after graduating half of their roster in the offseason. Haldane (Section I-Westchester), located in upstate Cold Spring, which had also defeated Pierson’s boys soccer team in the fall in the Regional Final, advanced to the New York State Final Four for the first time since 2016, where it will face Canton (Section X-St. Lawrence Area) this Friday morning at Cool Insuring Arena in Glens Falls.

Pierson head coach Will Fujita said he had a feeling his team would be facing the Blue Devils, who were 19-4 coming into Friday’s game, and gave them all the credit for their victory.

“We had been watching them for a while,” he said. “Credit to them, their coaching staff. They had a great game plan in place defensively. We were sloppy with the ball in the first half. That kind of cost us at the end, but I mean, I can’t be that upset with the effort that was given from the guys that were here.”

Haldane started the game strong on a 6-0 run, but thanks in large part to junior Keanu King, the Whalers got themselves back into the game. King’s bank-shot three brought Pierson within one at 11-10 with a minute to go in the first quarter. But junior forward Charlie McLean was called for his second foul with just seconds remaining in the frame and had to come out of the game. Just over 30 seconds into the second quarter, junior Luke Seltzer picked up his second foul, but he stayed in the game for a little bit longer before being subbed out.

That left much of the offense to both King, who scored all seven of his points in the first half, and fellow junior Aven Smith, who’s pair of three-pointers nearly midway through the second kept Pierson in the game. McLean came back into the game at that point but picked up his third foul not long after and had to come back out of the game.

To the Whalers’ credit, they wouldn’t go away, even when it appeared Haldane was ready to take things over. A pair of free throws by Seltzer tied the game at 24-24 with 2:50 remaining in the first half. A turnover caused by King eventually led to Haldane calling a timeout. After the break, Haldane closed out the first half on a 6-0 run and kept that going in the second half, when a quick bucket by Matteo Cervone (game-high 26 points) made it 32-24.

Seltzer ended Haldane’s run with a bucket of his own, and he and Smith did everything they could to keep Pierson in the game. Smith, as he’s shown a propensity to do this season, as recently as the C/D Qualifier victory over Bridgehampton, started draining threes in the third quarter. He made three of them and scored 13 points overall in the third leading to a team-high 25 points.

Smith and Seltzer continued to be a dynamic duo in the fourth quarter. Seltzer, who scored 11 of his 17 points in the second half, nailed a three that tied the game at 51-51 with 3:00 left in regulation, and at that point both teams were getting close to the double bonus where the game would come down to free throws.

The Blue Devils didn’t shoot all that well from the charity stripe in the fourth quarter, shooting 5 of 10 total, but Cervone personally went 3 for 4, including a pair of big makes with 30 seconds remaining to make it a 56-53 game. Seltzer did get a three off in the final seconds but missed, then Matt Nachamkun made one of two free throws to make it a two-possession game with just nine seconds left, basically icing the game for Haldane.

Fujita didn’t necessarily agree that his team was rusty after having roughly two weeks off from its last game played, which was February 25 against Southampton in the B/C/D Qualifier of the Section XI tournament. He said his team was practicing basically every day since then.

He very much put the onus on himself for the loss.

“I think that I have to be more prepared as the coach. Nothing that our guys did tonight was short of executing the game plan that we put in place,” he said. “They worked so hard, they never gave up the entire time. It’s not on them at all. I take responsibility for the beginning and how we started, and I’m just going to have to get better at that type of prep.”

Fujita specifically said what Haldane did well was on the defensive side of the ball, switching from a 2-2-1 defense to a 1-2-2 throughout the game.

“Changing that top guy creates a different look, and I think that our guards felt like there were openings and then all of a sudden the gap would close,” he explained. “We’re going to hit the weights on Monday, so we’re definitely not going to take too much time to think about this. We’re going to watch this film, we’re going to learn. We’re going to take this offseason to prepare ourselves to where Haldane is going. Having a taste of it last year was nice, but the job is not finished.”

Pierson wound up finishing the season with just one senior on the team, Fritz Desir, who Fujita praised for sticking around even when there wasn’t much playing time to be had.

“I would like to give Fritz a lot of credit here for sticking with this. He’s been everything I could have asked for,” he said. “He’s such a great leader for these guys, he’s such a great role model. He’s got an incredible sense of humor and we’re going to miss him a lot.”

That being said, Pierson is expected to return almost its entire team next season when, due to the impending addition of a sixth class (AAA), it will be moving up to Class B. Even with that move up, expectations will remain high and the goals won’t change.

“I think that when the season ended last year, obviously you lose that much maturity there’s going to be some learning curves,” Fujita explained. “Last year’s motto was to be grateful and to be consistent. I know I can speak for me and the rest of the guys that we really were just grateful to be able to go out there and play every day. And we worked on getting consistent and I think that from the beginning of the season until now they did their jobs and I think it’s just going to pave the way for things to come.”